


i’ll always be there (as frightened as you)

by andtwisted



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 06:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29538399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andtwisted/pseuds/andtwisted
Summary: glad to finally contribute to the very small pool of fleren fanworks!!title is from Being Alive from Company.
Relationships: Floch Forster/Eren Yeager
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	i’ll always be there (as frightened as you)

**Author's Note:**

> glad to finally contribute to the very small pool of fleren fanworks!!
> 
> title is from Being Alive from Company.

Something almost like a singular beat of a metronome. A sound unnatural coming from a thing meant to beat for the duration of a requiem or even a battle theme. It had to have been broken, he surmised. That singular beat residing within him—not quite love song but not quite battle cry—had to be broken. _He_ had to be broken.

It is with those thoughts that Floch descended the staircase to the basement. Basement was a sugarcoated abberation of the thing, though. It was a prison, and nothing more.

What resided within it could hardly be considered a prisoner, however. By all means—it was bound and chained and shackled, stripped of its basic necessities, practically living on air and nothing more. But it had chosen its resting place, like the desperate final act of a wild beast cornered. It could hardly be considered a prisoner. Within the darkness of the prison, its yellow eyes gleamed too brightly, with too much life. What sort of prisoner could look at Floch like that?

It sat against the wall, its angular figure casting a striking silhouette against the light of Floch’s lamp. The shadow shifts as Floch approaches with the lamp, becoming a beast, then an insect, then a formless, dying blob, then—well, anything but human, really.

Floch stood just before the door to the cell. In his right hand, the oil lamp. In his left, the key to the cell. Not that either of them needed it, but—discretion. It was easier, most times, to sneak about than to bare one’s sins to the world as if it were the unbuttoning of a shirt.

His right hand trembled. Perhaps in anticipation, but perhaps—from something more sinister, within him. Something somewhere within his abdomen, where an intense arousal unfurled at the sight of the thing inside the cell. His breath thinned. His heart quickened.

He slid the key into the keyhole.

The door groaned under the force applied to open it, the sound causing the thing inside to toss its head in Floch’s direction. Set inside a face nothing short of gaunt, yellow eyes pinned him in place, and the lamp nearly fell from his grasp.

“Floch,” the beast rumbled, voice raw from disuse and deep from age.

And there the metronome struck once more, and Floch realized that—no, it had not been broken, but simply set to a tune easily mistaken for brokenness. He was not broken, and the man inside the cell was not a beast. They had become what their world had demanded of them, and were misconstrued as a result. They were shadows—falsehoods by nature and caricatures by manipulation, and they were the same.

“Eren,” Floch breathed, approaching the man. He stood directly in front of him, holding out both the key and the lamp in a faint mockery of Lady Justice.

Both were taken from him, set to either of his accused.

“...Is that all?” he questioned, voice small despite towering over the sitting man. He was starkly reminded of four years ago, of Eren’s passion to defend his closest friend, somehow making Floch feel infinitesimal despite being a head shorter.

“No,” Eren responded, shifting his posture. “Sit.”

And it didn’t matter their positions, Eren would always have the power to bring Floch to his knees.

Four years, and not a damn thing had changed.

Eren’s hand flew to Floch’s face—to caress, not strike, and something within Floch broke, mending in the image of Eren.

Floch had always imagined Eren’s hands as dry, warm, steady. Something to tether Floch in the harder days when survivor’s guilt gripped his throat and nothing but the thought of his own death could satiate him.

However, Eren’s hands were cold. They were damp with sweat and so frigid Floch flinched back, and shaking so badly he had to catch them as they began their uncertain retreat, stopping Eren’s insecurities in its tracks and cradling those hands in front of his face. He pressed his lips firmly against them even as they shook and chilled his face. For even beasts needed to feel human at times. Eren’s hands shook even more violently as Floch held them, and this, too, was comforting.

“You don’t have anyone else, do you, Floch?” Eren inquired. His voice remained steady as ever, betraying none of his uncertainty.

“No,” the redhead murmured into Eren’s hands, mouth still pressed there. “I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” Eren admitted, golden eyes casted sideways, bracing for there to be a ruination of their time together. “Armin and Mikasa don’t understand. Historia has her own life now.” His voice broke at the end, telling of the tears threatening to burst. “I don’t have anyone else.”

“You have me, Eren,” Floch said. The other turned back to him in—not quite shock, but realization, and for the first time in four years, Floch witnessed a smile break out on Eren’s face. It was small, barely there, but it was theirs, and it was beautiful.

And he pressed his lips against those smiling ones—and that, too, was beautiful.


End file.
